Marusya Syroechkovskaya is a Moscow-born award-winning filmmaker and visual artist who had to flee Russia in March 2022 as the crackdown on opposition voices increased. Her student short film, “Exploration of Confinement,” received a Jury Award at the 2013 New Orleans Film Festival and qualified for the 2013 Academy Awards. Syroechkovskaya also is a 2015 Nipkow Programm Fellow.

“How to Save a Dead Friend” is screening at the 2022 DOC NYC film festival, which is running from November 9-27. 

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

MS: A boy saves his girlfriend from killing herself but neither of them can save him. “How to Save a Dead Friend” is about a love that stays strong through the years, despite oppressive and repressive regimes, despite depressions and addictions. It’s a film about a love that is stronger than death. And it’s a personal story that I’ve been filming for 12 years.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

MS: Since it’s so personal, the story was just eating me from the inside and I had to tell it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to go on. There were so many things in my life I couldn’t talk about before. I didn’t have the language nor the voice. This film is a way of finding my voice to tell my story.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

MS: I hope audiences will see that I have saved a memory of Kimi – my best friend, husband, and protagonist. I didn’t want his voice to be lost and gone. I believe that you are not gone as long as people remember you.

I hope audiences will recognize the early warning signs of self-destruction – it doesn’t have to be addiction, it can be depression, it can be not seeing the path ahead of you that seems open. I think the film can touch a lot of people.

Also, when I was growing up as a depressed teenager who didn’t know she had depression, I felt severely isolated from the rest of the world. Depression is an isolating illness. I hope my film helps break this isolation, even a little bit. I hope it helps people who are going through something similar feel they are not alone.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

MS: It was hard to think of myself as a character in the film. I’m usually the person behind the camera, not in front of it. So, getting this distance between me as a director and me as one of the protagonists was difficult. But when I got it, it felt therapeutic and helped me in my grieving process.

Another challenge was that most of the material came from my personal archives, with footage shot on different cameras, with different formats, and with different frames per second. How do you find a cohesive language for footage spanning 12 years, footage that wasn’t intended to be part of a film when it was shot?

I wanted to provide the feeling of what it was like to grow up in the ‘00s, to dive into sunny summer days through a kaleidoscope of formats, pulsating visuals, and sounds coming from all directions. It was definitely a challenge, not only for me and the editor but also for the post-production team. The image post-production team developed a special AI algorithm that upscaled some of the footage because it was shot on VHS and some small digital cameras from the early ‘00s, with a very small frame resolution. 

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

MS: We knew from the start that we couldn’t – and didn’t want to – finance this film in Russia. We didn’t want any influence from the state’s film fund bodies nor did we want any censorship. The inability to finance this project in our own country, where the story happened, made the production process a lot more complicated. It is an unfortunate destiny that many independent filmmakers from Russia are now facing.

Due to such circumstances, co-producing was part of our plan from the start. What helped us find our partners was Eurodoc, a workshop and training program in creative documentary production. Through them, we found our Swedish producer Mario Adamson; our Norwegian co-producer Anita Norfolk, who worked with Mario on his previous project; as well as our French co-producer Alexandre Cornu. Eurodoc also connected us to our German co-producing partners Arte and RBB.

All in all, “How to Save a Dead Friend” is a Swedish-French-Norwegian-German production, with funding from national film institutes. It is still ultimately a commentary on Russian life.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

MS: When I was a teenager, the camera was my coping mechanism. I didn’t know how to communicate my feelings, how to talk about my depression, nor how to ask for help. My camera helped me make sense of this world and became my communication tool. There was another aspect about the film medium that always fascinated me – the possibility to keep people, places, and music you love in one space. Film captures time. I lost some of my friends to suicide, but they are still alive in the videos I took of them. 

And there was one film that greatly inspired me: “Nowhere” by Gregg Araki, which I watched when I was 16. It was almost a religious experience for me.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

MS: The best advice is common knowledge, but it’s always good to repeat it once in a while: always, always backup your material on at least three different hard drives. If you have a backup on a cloud somewhere, that’s even better! Doing so dramatically reduces anxiety in your life, supports your mental health, and keeps your material safe.

I tried hard, but I couldn’t remember the worst advice. Maybe the one from my ex when I was preparing to shoot my first short film. He said, “You can’t jump over your own head.” Ouch! So here comes another bit of good old advice: life’s too short to spend it on people who don’t believe in you. 

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors? 

MS: Look into yourself. Look for a story no one can tell but you.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why. 

MS: It changes every other day but today, my favorite is “Raw” by Julia Ducournau. It’s touching, daring, and not afraid to cross the line, with some dark humor. And deeply feminist. A truly inspirational film.  

W&H: What, if any, responsibilities do you think storytellers have to confront the tumult in the world, from the pandemic to the loss of abortion rights and systemic violence? 

MS: I don’t think films can stop wars, unfortunately, but films can break the cycle of isolation and change people’s opinions and minds. To quote Kathleen McInnis,  “And this, as far as I can tell, is how we start slowly but surely shifting our perspectives to live in someone else’s shoes, even for a moment. It’s how and where we learn to question authority, build empathy, and discover both sameness and uniqueness. It’s where our first glimmer of understanding starts to make its way into our conscience, into our being.”

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing – and creating – negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

MS: We often see how Hollywood productions are plugging in one or two BIPOC characters to increase diversity, but the story still centers around white people. It’s important to have BIPOC writers on the team and among the crew to create relatable stories.

Also, there should be more funding and financial support for BIPOC directors and writers, especially the ones working on debut films. The first film is the toughest to finance.